Facebook listened to conversations

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook has paid hundreds of contractors to listen to and transcribe snippets of users’ conversations, US media reported yesterday, amid heightened scrutiny of the social network’s data collection practices. Facebook acknowledged the transcriptions, which were first reported by Bloomberg, telling the news agency in a statement that they were made with users’ permission, but that the practice has nonetheless been stopped. “Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago,” the company said. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment from AFP.

The contractors were testing the ability of the social network’s artificial intelligence to interpret messages, and the only users affected were those on Facebook Messenger app who had opted to have their voice chats transcribed. Bloomberg said the contractors working on the project were “rattled” by listening to private audio whose origin wasn’t disclosed and which

sometimes contained vulgar content. The contractors also weren’t told the reason why they were doing the transcribing, the news agency reported.

Amazon, Apple and Google - all companies offering voice assistants - have previously acknowledged collecting conversations for the purpose of improving their products. Apple and Google have in recent weeks said they’ve halted the practice, while Amazon gives users the option of blocking the collection of their voice by Alexa, the artificial intelligence driving their Echo voice assistant.

Facebook, which just settled a record $5 billion fine with the US Federal Trade Commission for misusing users’ private data, has given differing responses to reports that it uses audio recordings to better target ads or make its pages more attractive. “You’re talking about this conspiracy theory that gets passed around that we listen to what’s going on on your microphone and use that for ads,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in US Senate testimony last year. “We don’t do that,” he said.

But the company later told lawmakers in writing that it does actually collect conversations if users have specifically allowed it to do so and are using certain audio features. The company didn’t specify what it did with the audio afterwards.

Meanwhile, Twitter users will be able to follow a small number of interests by the end of the year in the same way they follow people, the company said Tuesday. The feature will be rolled out internationally as the one-to-many messaging platform prioritizes being an online venue for conversations rather than a pulpit for one-way broadcasting to the masses. “We are basically rewriting the entire conversation service,” Twitter product team leader Kayvon Beykpour told reporters during a briefing at the company’s San

Francisco headquarters. “We are rebuilding that infrastructure, and it is nearly complete.”

The company also highlighted ongoing efforts to make sharing thoughts on the platform safe and easy. Twitter has always let users follow accounts but a new feature, set to debut by the end of this year, will let users opt into following certain sports teams or categories on a curated list. For example, sending or interacting with tweets about a team might prompt a query over whether the user wants to “follow” that team or be kept in the know about what is being said on Twitter on the topics.

“We are going to let you directly follow topics on Twitter,” said product manager Rob Bishop. “Rather than replacing following people, we actually think this will help you find new people to follow.” There will be an ability to “mute” topics to avoid seeing the score of a sporting match, for example. Topics people follow will show up in their profiles as long as they are signed up for the interest.

Twitter is starting slowly, offering just a few sports options, to hone the feature before expanding to other topics, according to the teams. Subjects designated “interests” by Twitter are meant to be lasting - such as football or cricket - rather than passing hot topics, according to Bishop. “It is important for us to come up with a rigorous set of principles when it comes to defining topics,” Beykpour said. “We are taking this superpower very seriously.”

A conversations team at Twitter has been working on ways to get people more enthusiastically engaged in meaningful exchanges, dabbling with changes while being mindful not to disrupt the lives of people who rely on the service. “We know that Twitter is at its best with it is not just you tweeting something out as a broadcast, but really engaging in that conversation or being a host for others to engage in a conversation about what you are talking about,” said conversations product team member Sara Haider. Twitter has no plans for an often requested “edit” button that would let users change posts already fired off, saying it raised complex issues and was “not anywhere near the top of our list” of things to do. — AFP